Eve

Chapter 26

"What!?"

"I can do it, I can do it!"

"No, no," I say, turning to face Levon's even-more-stupid-with-pilot-headphones-on face. "You said you knew how to fly planes! That's why you're flying a plane!"

"Look, I know you're angry," Levon says, "but I can't understand what you say unless you write it –"

I grab my pad and scribble furiously on it:

You said you took courses!

"I did take courses!" Levon replies, as the plane bumps up and down with what I hope is turbulence and not engine malfunction. "I just never really learned how to... land."

"OH, SO WE'LL JUST FLY FOREVER, THEN!" I shout, looking from him to the clouds below us outside. "WE'LL JUST FLY UNTIL THE FUCKING END OF TIMES! LOVELY!"

"Stop grunting at me," Levon replies. "I know how to land, I just never... landed solo before."

I turn to face him, without a word.

"Look, they make you do fifty hours of supervised flight before you can fly solo, and I never... well, I've managed to get the plane off the ground and keep it in the air without the instructor's help, but I never quite mastered the landing."

Meaning what?

He clears his throat, uncomfortable. "That the instructor always had to take the controls from me so we wouldn't... huh... crash."

My God, this is a nightmare. Stupid, stupid, stupid Levon. If he wasn't flying this thing I swear to God I might eat him, not even out of hunger -- just so he'd stop doing stupid shit.

And this damn haze inside my head, like I smoked bad pot. It's getting harder and harder to ignore it.

"It's going to be fine. I can do it," Levon says, watching me from the corner of his eyes. "I've landed safely a lot of times...in Flight Simulator."

I roll my eyes.

Maybe it's better if we crash this thing and die fast, anyway. Maybe Patrick got it right. What are we going to do in New York, anyway?

And it's not like I can go back to LA. To what? Wait around to starve to death? Start eating babies?

Maybe a crash could solve all this. Fast and painless.

Well... painful. But at least fast.

"I think we're getting close," Levon says, checking the GPS. "Yeah, we're – uh-oh."

"What!?" I ask.

"Huh... Eve... how do I put this?"

"How do you put what?"

"Stop grunting! It's no big deal, I just... I kind of forgot, before we left... to check the... huh..." Levon covers the rest of his sentence with a cough. "... gas."

"Oh, you fucking idiot! You fucking king of all the idiots in idiotland! You lord of all that's dumb and stupid in the world, how did you manage to survive to this day!?"

Levon blinks at me. "You're yelling, right? I can tell when you're yelling at me."

I grab the pad and scribble so furiously the paper almost tears:

What. Now?

"Relax... we'll just... I'll land in the nearest airport. If there is one."

If not?

Levon scratches his head. "Then in the nearest open field. Or highway – it's not like there's any traffic at this time, haha." He turns to face the sky in front of us. "Really, it'll be fine."

I shake my head, grabbing the pen again:

How much gas left?

"Probably enough to find an airport," Levon says, checking the dashboard. "I think it should be –"

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Levon's eyes freeze on the dashboard, where a little red light just started blinking like crazy by the GPS.

"Maybe not," he says, biting his lips.

Through the haze of my clusterfuck of a starving zombie mind, I manage to throw Levon one last 'you're an idiot' look.

Then the skies rush upwards out the window and we sink through the clouds, and I feel the floor giving away under my feet.